'Detroit' film leaves a disturbing feeling of grief, nothing to celebrate

In director Kathryn Bigelow's first film since 'Zero Dark Thirty,' 'Detroit' tells the powerful story of the Detroit riots in 1967 and the murders of three African-American teens at the Algiers Motel.
USA TODAY

John Boyega plays a private security guard named Melvin. The character is based on the real Melvin Dismukes, who was guarding a store when he became involved in the 1967 upheaval.(Photo: Francois Duhamel)

Had I been able, I might have hidden my despair. But when you leave a funeral, that is impossible. And the film is a funeral, a national memorial to three boys killed by hate and mourned by a nation 50 years late.

I wanted the movie to fade to black and tell us the killers were safely rotting in hell. Two are dead, but one, I’ve learned, lives in suburban Detroit. I wondered whether I’d ever passed him on a street.

I left the theater in the first of the five stages of grief, something Detroit has not completed since the rebellion-turned-riot that left at least 43 dead, more than 1,100 injured, more than 7,200 arrested, thousands of buildings destroyed.

Detroit passed quickly through the first stage — denial — its leaders asking for months: How could it happen here, when the question should have been: How could it not?

But Detroit has remained in the second stage — anger — for a half-century, with fingers pointing back and forth over who and what was responsible, and residents badmouthing the city worse than anyone outside Detroit ever could.

Detroit’s leadership moved into the third stage — bargaining — only because the city is pushing a renaissance it knows will fail if its predominantly black neighborhoods are left out. Meanwhile, many black residents, with little to bargain with, moved to the fourth stage — depression — spurred by the realization that some things have not changed and a police department that terrorized black residents for decades has never acknowledged those transgressions.

It is what keeps Detroit from the final stage — acceptance and hope.

That’s where Lesleigh Mausi, a 43-year-old former language arts teacher and current educational consultant, comes in. She and Candice Fortman, a marketing and engagement manager at WDET-FM radio, both products of Detroit city schools, were distraught after the film, upset by how little they knew about the Algiers killings.

“I was numb. I hadn’t heard any of this before,” Mausi said. “I felt grossly uninformed. As a citizen living and growing up in Detroit, it was a missing piece for me. And when I saw the emotion pouring out of people who actually lived through it, I felt disconnected…”

Mausi worries, like many of us, about possible reactions from people seeing the film — not just in Detroit, where it opened early, but across the country when it opens Friday — as comparisons surely will be made with the current Black Lives Matter movement.

“I don’t know what others come away from that movie wanting or feeling, but I came away feeling like I had to do something,” Mausi said. So, she, Fortman and Mausi's mother-in-law, Shahida Mausi, president of the company that manages Chene Park, created a discussion guide, complete with recommended reading, to help spur conversations about — and a greater understanding of — the history behind the film.

They have called it “The Continuum: A Multi-Generational Conversation on Civil Unrest,” and they’ve made it available for free on Tumblr at thecontinuum313.tumblr.com.

Lesleigh Mausi, who lives with her husband and children in North Carolina and Michigan, lamented that the conversations and teaching had not begun sooner.

“I honestly feel like we could be teaching history all wrong,” she said, adding that she spent the week after the film “talking to elders, my parents, my in-laws, our grandparents” to write a “curriculum of sorts that can be used by groups, schools, churches, synagogues and mosques to engage their communities.

“I recommend that people see the movie, but that they not go alone,” she said. “There should be a processing, a meaningful discourse that follows that brings some clarity after watching something so heavy, and brings some perspective for those living through the current events of our time. It’s all parallel.”

That has been Detroit’s — and America’s — problem: Blacks and whites have lived lives in parallel, not always together, not always fairly, for centuries. Mausi hopes that Bigelow’s film might initiate real conversations about what Detroit has been and what it should be — when we actually live together rather than in constant face-off.

The blind pig, also known as the United Community League for Civic Action, was on the second floor of Economy Printing at 9125 12th Street in Detroit. A police raid on this illegal bar and gambling joint sparked the 1967 Detroit uprisings. Ira Rosenberg, Detroit Free Press

Congressman John Conyers, Detroit Democrat, uses a bullhorn as he tried to encourage African Americans in Detroit's riot area to go home, July 23, 1967. He was met with shouts of "No, no." As Conyers stepped down a rock hit the street a few feet from him. Associated Press

National Guardsmen, were called in to restore order by Michigan Gov. George Romney, stop their vehicle near a Detroit fire truck July 24, 1967, in the neighborhood that was ravaged by rioting the previous day. At least three people were killed. Associated Press

The flames of riot leave so little for their victims. For Emma Jean Woolford it was only bedsprings and a headboard dragged desperately from her blazing home to safety at Boston Blvd snd Linwood in Detroit on Sunday, July 23, 1967. Bert Emanuele, Detroit Free Press

A woman and children stroll past the remains of once substantial homes which were caught up in the path of the rioters in Detroit, July 25, 1967. The houses are a short distance from 12th Street, center of the riot area. Associated Press

Gov. George Romney, center, is guarded by an unidentified policeman holding a shotgun as he toured the scene of Detroit riot, July 24, 1967. Rampaging blacks bombed, pillaged and burned their way through a wide area of the city. (AP Photo) AP

Gov. George Romney, center, confers with Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, right, of Detroit as National Guardsmen standby in a part of Detroit that was ravaged by rioters, July 24, 1967. Romney called in the guardsmen as rioters firebombed and pillaged a wide area of the city. Associated Press

Lt. General John Throckmorton takes to the field with his paratroopers in riot-torn Detroit on July 25, 1967. Throckmorton is commander of the 4,700 troops sent to Detroit by President Johnson to quell the outbreak. Fred Plofchan, Detroit Free Press

In this July 25, 1967 photo, smoke rises from a fire set at the busy intersection of Grand River and 14 Street in Detroit, near another burned out building. The fire was set despite patrols by the National Guard, police and Army troops. AP

Lt. Gen. John J. Throckmorton, left, commanding general of U.S. Army troops in Detroit, and Cyrus Vance, special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, appear at a press conference in Detroit, July 25, 1967. Vance said the situation in the city appeared less tense than the previous night. Gen. Throckmorton said his troops had been ordered to use minimum force to keep order in the riot areas. Associated Press

Men captured in the vicinity of the 10th Police Precinct in Detroit, July 26, 1967, peer from under a garage door awaiting removal and guarded by an Army trooper. The precinct building came under fire in daylight hours. Associated Press

National Guardsmen with machine guns and rifles block off 12th Street on Detroit's West Side, July 26, 1967, to give firemen a chance to fight a small fire. Snipers have taken a heavy toll among firemen as they fought hundreds of fires set by rioters. Associated Press

The Manor House, circled, is where three young black men were found slain in late July 1967. It is a three story home turned into an annex for the Algiers Motel, 8301 Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Ed Haun, Detroit Free Press

Walter Evans, who lives on Pingree St. on Detroit’s West Side, patiently waters his lawn, July 27, 1967 to keep it green in front of his home which was spared from fires set by rioters. Next door are the stark ruins of his neighbor’s home burned by a fire that swept almost the whole residential block. Associated Press

Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh speaks to a young man on Detroit 's east side in September 1967 after the Detroit riots in July of 1967. The young man tells the mayor the rubble had been a five and ten cent store. Ira Rosenberg, Detroit Free Press

Michigan Governor George Romney bows head with hand to forehead in a moment of meditation before making a live television appearance to speak on Detroit's rioting of past week, July 30, 1967. Romney said, "Both white and Negro extremist organizations are preaching hate and arming." Alvan Quinn, Associated Press

Pallbearers carry the tiny casket of Tanya Blanding, 4, a victim of riots in Detroit, Tuesday, August 1, 1967. The girl was killed as a hail of police and National Guard bullets swept an apartment building where she huddled on the floor. Officials said the flare of a match used to light a cigarette was mistaken for the flash of a sniper's gun. Associated Press

We won’t be able to rely on just the film, which has its flaws. For instance, Bigelow shoves more than a century of police brutality and discrimination against black people into a short, sad “Schoolhouse Rock”-type explainer, without the music, for those who still don’t realize how bad things were for many black Detroit residents.

That may be necessary in a film, but unfortunately, that is how the story of the uprising is always told; Decades of pain are brushed over to get to five days of hell, never addressing what Juanita Moore, president of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, rightly characterized as a continual diminishment of the human spirit.

Black people “are so conditioned to understand that these things happen to us and that our lives are worthless, that we just keep moving,” she said. “People see it, their hearts break, but they swallow it and keep moving.”

Films are not required to leave you with hope. Bigelow’s take, as powerful as it was, did not. It did not fade to black WITH a screen telling the audience that Detroit activists held their own trial, a mock tribunal for the officers a month after the killings.

Dan Aldridge, a New York native who came to Detroit two years before the rebellion, V. Lonnie Peek, the former social worker, and Dorothy Dewberry, who would become Aldridge's wife, organized the trial with Aldridge and Peek as prosecutors, the late Kenneth Cockrel as judge and Rosa Parks among the jurors.

More than 3,000 packed the church and streets outside what is now the Shrine of the Black Madonna for the trial. The media largely ignored it, Aldridge said. The trial went on, anyway. The officers were convicted. And it is possible that the trial helped tamp down anger over the officers' acquittal, Dan Aldridge said.

"People felt better," Dorothy Dewberry Aldridge said. "They were able to say they didn't just go home and let it happen. And some of that spirit showed up in the redevelopment of 12th Street."

Dan Aldridge said no one expected anything to happen to the police officers, "but they wanted to have an opportunity to at least express their feelings. The community was just uplifted. You'd be walking down the street and people would just grab you and hug you because they'd never seen the police held accountable for anything."

Detroit still has not had a reckoning regarding the rebellion or the Algiers killings. But it must to deal with the problem of the color line, whether by using a concerned citizens’ discussion guide, or having conversations at the barber shop or at the beauty salon or at church.

Until we do, Detroit will never fully recover and complete its grieving. The last stage, acceptance and hope, still remains.

Contact Rochelle Riley at rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley.